Let’s Go Pod-y: Baylor Bears

“Let’s Go Pod-y” listens to podcasts from this week’s football opponent so you don’t have to!

The Podcast: Our Daily Bears Podcast

This was a long one! Normally I’d review a couple pods, but Baylor has a smaller inventory of podcasts and Our Daily Bears does a pretty nice and long one (TWSS). The entire pod is 90 mins, if you want exclusive Iowa State chatter start at the 47 minute mark. For even more Baylor talk check out SicEm365 Radio or the Please Bear With Me pod.

Let’s get this started!

First 20 mins or so can be summed up as: We hope Gerry Bohannan is a really good QB. He’s been really good against crappy teams, but here are even more justifications as why he’s probably going to be just as good in conference play and may actually be the second coming of Jes...er...Robert Griffin III himself. (I’m only exaggerating a little)

Gerry is actually GARY! Apparently Baylor’s QB pronounces his name with a hard-G. Who knew? Not this guy. Hours later I would find out on the WRNL Discord that Iowa State’s newly minted starting Mike LB is also a Gary-Gerry, Gerry Vaughn. This has to be the only Big 12 matchup all season of two hard-G Gerry’s right? Starters for sure. Heady times indeed.

On Baylor’s recent crappiness: “Baylor’s been the 3rd, 4th, 5th best recruiting class for the last 8 or 9 years? … so [comparisons to Texas with good recruiting, poor results] … this is still a top 4-5 roster in the league, so there isn’t a reason with good coaching that they can’t finish as a top 4 or 5 team”

“Sundays are a lot more fun around my house [this season], because [last year] I’d just be tweeting ‘wow, this sucks, these plays suck, what do you want me to break down about this game?’ and everyone would be agreeing with me like ‘yeah, this is terrible’ ”

On QB Gerry Bohannan: “and that play, I think I tweeted it out, I was like, the man’s poise is in the pocket, is something … it’s been 5 years since we’ve seen and it is [small moan of pleasure] it is so refreshing”

On the Baylor RBs: “Abram Smith fantastic, again. Ebner, little bit ... the fumble, a couple fumbles [against Kansas] are a little bit frustrating. A bit of a concern going forward, really don’t want to give Iowa State the football”

“Iowa State had that one guy that switched like from Quarterback to Linebacker [Joel Lanning]. Haha! Oh yeah! He was pretty good too – he was fun to watch! But you don’t get it very often where they switch and then switch back like Abram Smith [RB/LB/RB] did”

On the Kansas game concerns: “We didn’t have any sacks against Kansas …he’s right, we don’t have a pass rush … yeah that’s a huge concern”

On Iowa State: “Brock Purdy, he makes plays man, he makes plays … for both teams [giggle-fest ensues while they recount the ISU/TCU game pick-six]”

On Iowa State’s Non-Con games: “Iowa State does their damndest to make the Big 12 look terrible by losing in the nonconference [referring mostly to Iowa] and then winning the Big 12”

A surprising voice of reason emerges: “if you think about it realistically though the real reason why [Iowa State] struggles against like Iowa every year is because that ground & pound game that gets them the success in the Big 12, that’s not gonna fly in the Big 10. That’s what everyone is doing in that league [Big 10], but no one is doing that in the Big 12. Everybody down here is trying to spread you out & throw the ball deep, and so that game doesn’t translate against Iowa, but it’s still gonna translate against us [Baylor]. [heavy sigh] yeah.”

Point about Breece: “Breece Hall hasn’t been setting the world on fire … remember last year there was all the hype about Chubba Hubbard, and the hype about Breece Hall, he hasn’t really lived up to that so far”

Counterpoint about Breece: “[Breece Hall] is one of the most threatening running backs in the conference, and he’s one of the most threatening running backs in the country, yeah his stat line doesn’t show it, and he had a really big fumble in the Iowa game … but if you don’t take him seriously, he can absolutely be the difference in this or any game”

More Breece: “Iowa completely sold out to stop Breece, they didn’t respect Purdy at all, and there’s not another running back on the planet that can put up favorable numbers if they’re able to do that .. but when you look at him, that dude makes more guys miss than any guy in the country [compares him to a faster version of David Montgomery with breakaway speed]”

On how to beat Iowa State: “the recipe for success against Iowa State is to contain Purdy and then let him give the game away … at some point his fundamentals breakdown … the turnovers will come”

“I don’t think that Iowa State will be able to move the ball much against Baylor, they’ll be dependent on hitting the big play”

On the Defense: “the real concern I have is on the Iowa State defensive side of the ball … they are incredible”

“Will McDonald and Enyi Uwazurike are incredibly disruptive, based on the advanced stats … even based on the simple stats they just straight don’t give up any yards [nervous chuckle]”

“the 3-3 stack is a nasty defense, I hate the 3-3 stack, West Virginia, TCU, and Iowa State run it … you can run so many things out of it and attack in so many ways … 2nd and long situations it can look a thousand different ways and that just leads to 3rd and long”

“What Baylor’s offense needs to do? They need to score in the 1st half! This defense really dials down in the 2nd half”

“this Iowa State front 7 is nasty, I mean nasty, they have like all 8 defensive ends that are all 5th year seniors, I don’t know how that is possible, they have so many good defensive ends they’re moving them to nose guard [Enyi Uwazurike] just to get more of them on the field. He’s a monster”

On the Baylor offense countering: “Baylor has way more speed on the back-end [WRs vs. DBs] than Iowa State does, but it’s risky to sit in the pocket waiting for them to get open”

Interesting note: “[Baylor] is going for it all the time on 4th down, you’re gonna see it a lot.”

To their fans: “be loud, be excited, because this is a huge game”

They picked the game at the end of the pod. It can be hard to follow who’s talking on a pod with 3 or 4 people like this one, and also I don’t really care about their names anyway. They gave the option to pick outright or against the spread (Baylor +7)

Guy 1) Takes Baylor to cover (+7)

Guy 2) Takes Baylor to win outright

Guy 3) “Baylor wins for sure”

Guy 4) Takes Baylor to cover